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Make Private (For security bugs or stuff only for moderators)

PaulA Since: Jan, 2010
19th May, 2011 01:59:33 AM

There isn't an official rule, except that each page should pick one and stick to it. Use whatever's most prevalent in the page you're editing at the moment.

Fighteer MOD (Time Abyss)
19th May, 2011 06:13:23 AM

It should, however, be an emdash — rather than a hyphen -, if you use dashes as delimiters. And parentheses are horrible; please revise any articles you find that use them.

Edited by Fighteer "It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Deboss Since: Aug, 2009
23rd May, 2011 02:41:15 AM

We've got a page where it says, I can't remember where though. The rule is "keep it consistent on the page". My personal preference is for colons.

Fight smart, not fair.
Camacan MOD Since: Jan, 2001
26th May, 2011 10:04:01 PM

In my experience colons are most common and work well. Emdash seems rare, rarer than using a dash. Definitely use one style per page.

I agree using parentheses is not on: it makes no sense as punctuation and breaks down horribly once sub-examples are involved. Very error prone. You might find the regular expression \(([^)]+)\) handy when fixing up pages in that style — but watch out, people freely mix in regular parenthetical comments in examples in parentheses!

(For some reason the bracketed style turns up most on character sheets, usually for Manga or Anime works.)

Edited by Camacan
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